


Widow Not

by LilyChenAppreciationSociety



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Even If It's Illogical, F/M, Ghosts, Jydia, Let Lydia Be Happy, fluff and nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 11:57:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7170110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyChenAppreciationSociety/pseuds/LilyChenAppreciationSociety
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia recovers from her injuries and sees a familiar face. Is she really as alone as she thinks?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Widow Not

At the time the saddest thing had been that there hadn’t even been a proper funeral. John had just disappeared during the raid. Oh, they found some parts, a hand, a scrap of his gear, a lot of blood. There’d been a funeral pyre and all the right words; Ave Atque Vale. 

But there had been no true closure. Everyone knew improper funeral rites could leave the soul untethered, wandering the earth. It had been one last hurt, the idea of John suffering like that. But she’d moved on, kept her head up high and her duty in mind. 

“Now follow my finger.” Magnus said, watching her eyes carefully. Lydia tried to. It wasn’t easy, waking up after nearly two days unconscious. The fact that her last memories involved being left at the alter and then betrayed and attacked didn’t help much. 

After a few passes Magnus folded his hands behind his back. “Well, it looks like your brain is working. Congratulations. But I had to use some fairly strong magic to keep you alive, and two faery draughts just to get you to wake up. It would be surprising if you were anywhere near your regular strength.”

“Thank you.” Lydia said, her throat closing up. It was ridiculous, to have a warlock steal her fiance and then to end up owing him her life. It certainly wasn’t something a respectable Shadowhunter would do. 

“Alec and I-” Magnus began, “we owe you a lot. I’m just glad you’re alright.” 

Polite silence reigned over the infirmary, before Magnus, who didn’t quite seem comfortable with long break in conversations, cleared his throat and moved on. 

“But we don’t know what the side effects will be. We’ll be checking on you regularly, and there’s a bell right there. If anything strange happens. your vision grows blurry, your head hurts, ring the bell. And don’t fall asleep until I come back to check on you. I’d stay but-” 

“I understand.” Lydia said, folding her hands in her lap. “I can read reports. I heard I have a lot to catch up on.”

Magnus and Alec and Isabelle had filled her in a little bit, before the Lightwoods had been called away to attend to their parents. Valentine with the Cup, Jace Wayland missing, it seemed Lydia had woken up to a full scale crisis. 

Magnus smiled, tight-lipped, “Right. Well, get well soon.” 

Lydia inclined her head and Magnus swirled away, closing the door lightly behind him. Lydia was alone. 

The infirmary was large and full of the colored light that saturated the Institute, courtesy of the many stained glass windows. One of the other beds had been pulled out but the sheets were stripped down, Lydia had supposedly just missed a recovered Jocelyn Morgenstern. 

The rest of the room was mostly bare, apart from necessary medical equipment. Lydia leaned back into her pillows and reached for the pile of reports Magnus hadn’t let her read until he finished his checkup. 

She read until the sunshine had faded behind the colorful windows and she felt the knot twisting in her stomach again. What would the Clave think of her? She had let the Mortal Cup escape. What should she think of herself?

She felt an icy hand on the back of her neck and jumped, fighting instinct taking over and then promptly failing in the face of her probably concussion. She nearly flipped over the foot board to the bed moving away from the presence and when she turned her head was spinning. 

It took her a few minutes to register what was in front of her. A young man, a bit portly for a Shadowhunter, with a layer of fat over his solid muscle. Dark hair, stubble, a Mediterranean complexion, and a kind smile distorted by shock. 

“John?” Lydia breathed. 

“Lydia.” he smiled back. “How can you see me?”

“How are you here?” she said, realizing the answer even as she asked the question. He was wispy, wavering like a cloud, and so pale. But most Shadowhunters couldn’t see ghosts, and most ghosts could not move from a certain place, the place of their death or life or burial. 

John was sitting, as much as a ghost could sit, on the bed. “I’ve always been here, but you never knew before.”

Lydia touched her lips, remembering the strange aftertaste when she had awoken, like nettles had stung her tongue. “Do not partake of faery food.” she whispered. She had known there would be some drawback to her recovery, but she had thought it would come as a long rehabilitation time, or a forever impaired body. “John, how are you here, with me. Why didn’t you move on?”

John shrugged. “I had unfinished business and it was you. As for being here… I think I was lucky, or maybe I just loved you that much.”

He’d always been the romantic one of the pair, while Lydia had been the sensible one. She ached to touch him, to talk to him, but he was just an echo, a shade. and Lydia had moved on long ago. 

“You shouldn’t be here.” Lydia insisted, feeling tight all over, like her skin was too small for her voicebox and her brain and her heart. “You should have gone when you died and we buried you, you shouldn’t have been able to follow me. You shouldn’t be here, John!”

He moved closer. “Don’t you want me, Lydia?”

“Not like this.” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not right, it doesn’t make sense.”

John sat forward, still giving her some space without giving her enough. But Lydia thought that any proximity at this point was too much, hurt too much. “Lydia, we both know the Clave never gave much thought to ghosts. Few can see them, so it never mattered much. Who can say what’s right or not? All I know is that I’m here, with you. And you can see me now.You’re my unfinished business. Isn’t that enough?”

Lydia pressed her lips together. “It’s not. We’re both different. You’re just a fragment, and maybe I am too. I changed without you. I nearly married another man.” The idea of John seeing that, watching it, made her throat close up with guilt. She hadn’t thought he would mind, had trusted that he would not, but she still hated the idea of him being so aware of it.

“What do you want me to do?” John asked sadly. “I’m stuck with you, Lyddie.”

“Be happy.” Lydia told him. “Be happy and at peace. Please, for both of us.”

“I can’t, I tried, but I can’t. I’m here, Lydia.” John slid over the bed and to the other side of the room. Lydia inched back over to her pillow, but stayed sitting up. 

“I’m sorry seeing me hurt you.” he told her. 

“I’m sorry I can’t help you.” Lydia told him back. “I’m sorry I let you die.”

“It was never your fault.”

Lydia laid back and closed her eyes, hoping in some corner of her heart that this was all an injury induced hallucination, and praying with a much larger corner of it that every second was real. She wanted him desperately, even knowing that neither of them were right anymore, and that none of it was the same. “You always were good at lying to me.” she said. 

She could feel consciousness drifting away from her, and maybe John did too, because he warned, “Don’t fall asleep, the warlock said not to. I don’t want you joining me yet.”

Lydia nodded, even in these straights she still valued life too much to give it up so quickly, but didn’t open her eyes. The light hurt. “Talk to me.” she said on an impulse. “Keep me awake.” She should have ignored him, made it easier for both of them, but that was impossible. 

Hope crept into John’s voice. “About what?”

“Anything you want.” she told him, “Whatever you’ve been thinking since you- since you left me.”

John launched into a tirade about Valentine Morgenstern, covering up his own fear with chatter, and despite the light Lydia cracked her eyes open to look at his misty face. He was an echo, a fragment of a soul, but so was she. They’d both died in a way, in that terrible mess of noise and blood. 

She wondered if the Clave had ever bothered to make a rule about dating ghosts.


End file.
